Fucking Cheery Feet

Last December I joined a sock club created by CookieA. TheBrit bakes, and Cookie includes cookie recipes and I get to make socks so it's a win all around.

So the second session of the sock club was purple socks. Don't get me wrong, I like purple, but Didi of Little Red Bicycle had some bright yellow hanging around from a OOAK dye that I'd fallen in love with and snatched up. Plus, I'd gotten a little purpled out with the clubs I was in and my not-insignificant stockpile of the colour.

Fast-forward to July, when Cookie came to London to teach at Knit Nation. I was working on the Jubilee socks the day of the class, but she had a meetup for her area sock club members where we got to eat cookies and see the next yarn and one of the next socks. (Sorry, I can't tell you anything more than "they were yummy, it was pretty, and I'm looking forward to knitting up the pattern". We were sworn to secrecy.) So I brought my Boysenberry YO socks that Cookie has taken to referring to as my Marmalade YO socks¹ and she took a picture of them (and me) for posterity.

And I got her to sign my copy of Sock Innovation, which was well loved and had obviously been leafed through quite a bit. And I plan on taking the information I learned from her Knitting Off the Grid class and taking over the world designing some things.

Rather than just cheerfully yanking the photo (as I did for my project page) to post on the Ye Olde Blogg, I'm being good and asking permission since it is Cookie's photo that she took. So, until I hear one way or the other from her, I direct you to the link for the Marmalade socks above.

¹: That's right. Cookie A took a photo of me with socks that she designed and I knit. Why yes, that faint noise is the sound of me still doing the suppressed fangirl squee.

London Food Update!

Attention, all Americans living in the UK and wondering where to get garlic powder... Asian markets. There's two that I went into in Chinatown (London:Soho) that had big bags of it for sale.

Chicken Taquitos... Of a sort

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to make the Baked Chicken Taquitos posted in Foodgawker.

I had to make some alterations in the recipe as London is not generally known for being the bastion of Mexican food ingredients.

Green salsa (salsa verde) is not easily obtainable at supermarkets so I used standard salsa. When tomatillos come in season and are accessible via Borough Market, I'll grab some of those and some Anaheim chiles and make a damned fine roasted salsa verde for future use. The good news is that salsas generally freeze well.

For all Americans living in the UK (or UKers using American recipes), be aware that when cilantro is called for in a US recipe, it can be found in grocery stores as coriander in the UK.

Instead of shredding the chicken, I poached 6 chicken thighs (approximately 1 pound/450 grams/2 cups) in chicken stock with some onion powder and garlic powder. When I make this again, I'll probably put some taco or fajita seasoning in the stock. After the thighs were poached, I pulled the additional fat from the meat, put it in the food processor and pulsed until the chicken was akin to mince. Not the same as shredded, but with the mix of cream cheese and spices, I figured it would give more even distribution of meat protein through the filling.

Mexican cheese was another one that isn't exactly ubiquitous over here. I used shredded Monterey Jack (available at Waitrose/Ocado and Sainsbury's), but another substitution would be half cheddar and half a mild, soft cheese like Edam or Mozzerella. I would avoid Gouda. In a pinch (and if I didn't care about plastic cheese), I might use jarred nacho cheese. But only if I were desperate.

Topped with sour cream and store-bought guacamole, these were quite nice. I have four in the freezer for leftover eating this week. They should be quite good.

I wouldn't call them taquitos or burritos. More like sauceless enchiladas.

Urban Fox Mating Rituals

...apparently take place under my living room window.

I was happily watching some event of the Winter Olympics a few nights ago when I heard what sounded like a cat fight out my window. Okay, no biggie, even though it was past midnight, until it started sounding like a child being flayed. Then I grabbed the phone, ready to call 999 and possibly go outside and beat someone with a lead pipe. (Just call me Miss Scarlet.)

I look out the window and I see a shadow scurry off in one direction and notice a fox looking up at me. Yeah, we live near Greenwich Park and Blackheath, both extensive green spaces, but I'm not sure I expected so much attitude from a fox.

As I looked down at the fox, he looked up at me and might as well have said "what, Bitch, I was gettin' my groove on and you have to be all human and ruin it."

I actually felt bad for interrupting the fox fucking, and then realized that I was getting a tough guy attitude from a fox.

I guess I'm glad that there will continue to be kits around, but as the fox sauntered off, I came to the sudden realization that we have chav foxes engaged in car-less dogging. Go Greenwich!

25 - 28 Feb 2010

Planned dinner menus:

Thai-style scallops with rice and vegetables

Venison lasagne with salad and garlic bread

Erwtesoep with fresh baked bread and salad

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos with refried beans and Spanish rice.

That is, of course, the plan.

The Thai-style scallops with rice are going to be simple; I have a sambal sauce that's pre-prepared, so I'll caramalize the scallops and then toss them with some of the sauce, serve it over rice with broccolini and green beans.

Venison lasagne is just a lasagne with venison mince cooked into the red sauce.

Erwtesoep is a split pea and sausage stew that B fell in love with when he was working in Amsterdam for three years. I have a recipe that's supposed to be wonderful, and we'll give it a shot. It makes about 17 million gallons. Somewhere around there, it serves 8 people or some such. I figure I'll be able to portion the remainder out and tuck it in the freezer for emergency eating. It's a good winter food, and given that it's barely cleared 40°F here in London in the last month, it seems to be a well timed meal. The only issue is that I can't find split green peas here, so it will be yellow. I admit to debating on getting green food coloring in order to get it more to the color B (and I) expect... But I think the yellow split peas will be slightly sweeter than green would be.

The chicken taquitos I came across when I sent a plaintive Gchat message to Ritsuka, saying "HELP! I have three mains, I need a fourth for when B comes home!" I explained what I had planned, and she said, "This sounds like a time to use foodgawker."

"Uh, bwuh, what is foo...oooooooh."

"Yeah."

"POOD FORN! You gave me pood forn!" (Yes, I was so excited I transposed letters. Leave me be.)

I've started digging 'round in there and I've decided that one meal a week will be from foodgawker.

To explain, I only have to plan out four meals a week because B works out of town and I generally eat leftovers or quick food during the week.

I can't wait for Spring to hit so I can go mental at Borough Market. I already have plans and I can't wait to see my fishmonger again. And I'm sure that B would love to get some new and exciting cheese.

Reviews and opinons to come!

Oh man, it's been busy. Aside from not feeling well (apparently, it's a pre-requisite for turning 30 in my body), it's been a constant whirlwind of events here.

So, here's a list of the reviews and posts and whatnot to come over the next few days...

Accent On Youth (play)
Exit the King (play)
Waiting for Godot (play)
Bam-Bou (restaurant)

...I'm sure I'm missing something, maybe The Brit can help me out.

And yes, I've turned 30. Oh, my... 30. I suppose it should be scary and bad, but it's really just another year. Or so I keep telling myself. I've compensated for aging by dyeing my hair blue. A friend of mine came over (thanks Emma!) to help me out with the bleaching and dyeing. My hair takes after its owner - certain parts of it were just resistant. I figure that I'll muck around with it when it's time to do the redyeing. Still need to get a haircut done and then the following cut, I'll have them do a professional bleach/strip job and come home and have The Brit goop me up.

However, the dyeing led to two awesome things aside from the blue hair: awesome bacon and pea pasta dinner of numminess and the best tweet that was ever tweeted in the twitterverse. In England. That hour. Originating from the 3rd floor of a building.

"I have lube, Emma, and food. I'll leave it to you to imagine what we'll be up to."

So, my early mid-life crisis has displayed itself in the form of blue hair. I like the front colour better than the back and will probably do that on my whole head for the next time. Or if the back blue washes out before the front does.

I swear, I'll do the reviews soon! Promise!

Spring Awakening (Novello Theatre, West End)

Spring Awakening... It is to late 19th century Germany what Heathers was to 1980s America.

Random? Yeah.

Accurate? Sort of.

I wish I had the program in front of me, because it had an excellent blurb about the original author and the reinterpretation as a rock musical. The long and short of it is this - dude who originally wrote it was writing a commentary on the stress of German education among the upper echelon and how it led to a potential spate of problems, especially when dealing with arbitrary measures to determine who can proceed and who cannot. When it was published and originally performed, it was so censored that the entire point that was trying to be made was lost on the censor's floor.

100 years later... Some one else comes across it and goes "hey, let's turn this into a musical" and so current day Spring Awakening was born.

A few things that made my American brain go "bwuh" was the vowel sounds from British mouths. The difference between "Gowd" and "Gahd" was making me go "oh, almost!" from having listened to the soundtrack so many times. Changing the name of one of the characters from "Fanny" to "Laura" or some such also mildly irritated me, but I realized that it was a serious enough part of the play that the invariable titters from the audience would break the tension. (Fanny, in BritSlangSpeak is roughly equivalent to pussy in American - a euphamism for the external female genitalia without the insulting quality of cooze, twat, or cunt.)

I also fell completely in love with the actor who played Georg. I think he out of all of the cast embraced their character without overacting. Melchior was good, but a little shy at times, which was not in character. Hanschen hammed it up a bit, but I think his character leans that way. Otto was grand. Moritz had a HUGE problem with controlling his volume, particularly when miked, and blasted out the audience's collective eardrums when he was supposed to be intense or enthused. His energy was good, but his control was lacking. The girls were generally unremarkable, but they were designed to have a role that progressed the boys' plot. Though, the girl who played Anna (I think) looked remarkably like a young Emma Watson with the way she was styled.

My favorite part, and the part that it seemed took the audience the longest time to catch onto was the manner in which the adult roles were treated. All of the adult characters in the play were performed by one actor and one actress. The commentary on the essential interchangability of adults in a teenager's life is a wonderful insight into the size and scope of an adolescent universe.

I wish that I'd been able to get a photo of the set. It was a combination of controlled chaos, but it incorporated everything that was needed for each scene without being cluttered. The use of vertical space is what kept it from being too insane.

A big thank you to Kevin Spacey and the other producers (both executive and assistant) for having the faith and the vision to bring this to London. Yeah, it'd done well in New York, but American audiences are different from European audiences, especially when it comes to how they view their children and schools.

Avenue Q (in London)

First, let me say that the only way this could have been more awesome is if it were "Avenue Z" because then the Brits would be calling it "Avenue Zed" and that would have sent me into a titter every time.

TheBrit and I went to see Avenue Q the weekend after I arrived back in London. I'd been wanting to see it for a while, but the main impetus was that it was CLOSING. (What?!) So we got tickets to see it the last week it was in town. (Much like when we went to see Spamalot... last week of showing.)

Since we saw it, it apparently became so much in demand that it's now on hiatus and will be re-showing in a new location starting June 1.

I don't know if TheBrit grew up on Sesame Street like I did (I suspect not), but the Muppet Movies were ubiquitous throughout the Western World. At least there was a bit of commonality there.

I seem to recall finding out when I was younger that Sesame Street was supposed to take place Small Town, New York. Stony Brook, or something like that. Someplace where there was still a small town feed, but a need for the brownstone type buildings. So, this was a bit like going to see Sesame Street's big city cousins (being located in Brooklyn).

The composition of the set was fantastic. I was half-expecting a bodego to stand in for Mr. Hooper's store (I'm dating myself here), but it was just an apartment block and the people (and muppets) that resided there. Kate Monster, Trekkie Monster, Princeton, Rod and Nicky, and Christmas Eve, Gary, and Brian. Two things struck me during the watching - the use of screens that gave the little PSA-type cartoons ... I don't remember that from my tenure of Sesame Street, though it may be happening now, and that when addressing the muppets the puppeteers and the human characters looked at the Muppet they were talking to, not to the actor.

The music was fantastic, and translated well to a London audience, most of who had limited exposure to Sesame Street. There were a few jokes or callbacks that were Ameri-centric and may have been slightly lost on the average Brit: Gary is Gary Coleman (whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?) and the development of a Monstersorri School...

Music, muppets having sex, the Bad Idea Bears (more booze, more fun, yay!), and the energy was just suck you off your seat awesome. The most amazing thing to me, though, was when the puppeteer for Kate Monster also had to do the voice for Lucy The Slut, the muppets were on two different people, but the voice actress ran the entire conversation. It took me a bit to realize it was the same person because I'd been sucked into the entire "the muppets, they're real!" world they created.

I think, though, that my favorite part was unintentional. The woman hired to play the role of Christmas was Chinese. The character of Christmas is supposed to be Japanese and limited to working in a Korean restaurant. (Though, they did change that line to something else because Korean restaurants aren't as prevalant in London as in New York.) [Edit: looked at the cast info for the London crew - either they've changed actors or I mis-read the blurb - she's Filipino, but has studied in China. Playing a Japanese woman. Who's mistaken for Korean. Awesome.]

It's strange. It's twisted. It's a great story that hits home if you're a muppet, a monster, or a human. Trekkie Monster's porn fixation is phenomonal. A song just for me ("Schadenfreude") was great. TheBrit and I went and found the Broadway soundtrack a day or so after seeing it. My singing Trekkie Monster's part during "The Internet is for Porn" caused him to almost fall off his chair with laughter (though that may have been me pelvic thrusting against him with such ferocity) and we now have a number of inside-joke-slash-catchphrases from seeing that show.

Go see it. If you don't, my only response can be... Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?